Better is the poor that walketh in his integrity, than he that is perverse in his lips, and is a fool. Proverbs 19:1 When Carlo Ponzi arrived in Boston from Italy in 1903, he had just $2.51 in his pocket. He quickly became involved in a number of shady deals and served several years in prison, first for forgery and then later for his involvement in a smuggling ring. When he returned to society, he determined to make a fortune, and he began encouraging people to invest in a plan that was “guaranteed” to pay them a handsome rate of interest. Ponzi was selling international reply coupons, a form of postage payment designed for international mail. Since few people had ever seen one and almost no one understood how they worked, it was easy for Ponzi to convince people that buying them in different countries could produce vast profits. Though there was never any real way to make money in the project, Ponzi used the new money coming in to pay off his early investors, and publicity encouraged still more people to “invest.” When the plan collapsed, those who had trusted Ponzi lost everything. In less than a year he had swindled some 250 million dollars in today’s money from those who trusted him. Today his very name is synonymous with swindles and schemes. Though God may choose to bless us with financial riches, the presence of wealth is certainly not proof that a person is doing what he should. In fact, there are cases when riches are part of God’s judgment on someone’s life. Proverbs 1:32 notes, “...the prosperity of fools shall destroy them,” Instead of focusing our desires and ambition on accumulating money and things, we should focus on keeping our character and integrity strong. Though that kind of wealth cannot be measured in dollars, stocks, or assets, it is a true wealth that can never be taken away or lost.
Posted on: Sun, 27 Oct 2013 13:21:28 +0000
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